Warning: This woman is an INTJ with better-than-it-used-to-be emotional intelligence. Wit, sarcasm, sincerity, condescension, empathy, dumb jokes, useless facts, wide-sweeping generalizations and stereotypes may be found in this blog. Proceed with caution.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Influencing Group Behavior

Group behavior fascinates me.  Social expectations and actions can be so easily influenced that I find it surprising and disturbing.  There are masters of manipulation in areas of business, marketing and politics who understand the power of words delivered repeatedly and consistently.  Modeling behavior that you desire others to mimic can be a powerful tool in building productive work environments.  Tapping into subconscious motivations allows retailers to sell more goods as they experiment endlessly on consumers to find the best combination of ambient lighting, sounds and smells to trigger our desire to spend more money.  Whether or not we like it, these tactics are being employed all around us.  We are bombarded with it and most of us aren't even aware.  

It is not a coincidence that the first thing you may see when you enter a food retailer is flowers.  Flowers indicate to our subconscious a sense of "freshness" and may trigger feelings of happiness in us.  Everything from the width of the isles to the height of the ceiling is deliberately done to make people want to spend more time in the store.  My husband and I tried an experiment once after reading some articles about placement of items in grocery stores.  The articles asserted that most people turn RIGHT upon entering a grocery store.  I realized that I did indeed do this and so we decided to turn left in the store we shopped at from now on.  Our grocery bill dropped without conscious effort on our part.  You could say that since we expected that outcome, perhaps we just shopped more wisely and consciously... but I swear I felt like I was buying all of the same exact things and our total at the end was less.  Try it yourself sometime.  Look at where the fruits and vegetables are when you walk into a store... and then head in the opposite direction, making that your final area to shop.

I try to remain vigilant, recognizing when I hear the media pick up on a catch phrase in order to sway public opinion.  Where do they originate?  It hardly matters.  What matters is repetition.  If people hear things enough, they start to consider them basic truths.  If a certain behavior is seen and picked up by others, soon those others could become a majority and by simple peer pressure, a large percentage of the rest begin to mimic that behavior.  Ideas of politeness, political correctness, morality and even "common decency" or "common sense" come in to play.  

Call me crazy, but I like to play with these tendencies from time to time.  I try to use my experiments for good and everyone should know that while they may be my unwitting test subjects for a week or two, it is done out of mirth and a sincere interest in understanding, not out of malice.  I promise that if you have ever been or ever become one of my observations, I still see you as a person and I probably like you too, or you wouldn't be so interesting!

My latest experiment is at work and involves the coffee pot.  One day I noticed someone complaining about the wad of paper towels underneath the area where the coffee filter is, meant to catch any droplets after the coffee pot is removed.  They mentioned that no one ever thought of simply removing the used coffee grounds from the filter... instead they put down paper towels, and they showed me the used coffee grounds inside the filter holder.

I wondered if this were true and watched for a few weeks.  I started emptying the used coffee grounds to see if it stopped the water drops, but really there was still a lot of humidity in the filter holder so it continued to drip water.

I decided to try to get people to unknowingly fix the problem with a solution I would provide.

There is an old, plastic pitcher that sits near the back of the coffee pot on the side.  I think it used to be to hold old coffee grounds for someone who did composting.  At any rate, I decided this container could be my solution.  I started first by emptying out coffee grounds with the container under the filter holder as I moved to the trash in order to keep it from dripping on the floor.  I had a couple of "Hey! That's a good idea!" responses.  Others noticed but said nothing.

The next stage is the removal of the paper towel ritual.  Some are very attached to this process so headway will be slow here.  I'm surrounded by a LOT of SJ personalities... Guardians of tradition.  Typically this type is slow to endorse change unless they see a good reason for it.

I've started placing the plastic pitcher under the filter holder once the grounds are dumped into the trash and leaving it there to catch the errant drops of water.  This will probably annoy some people at first, since now they have to move this object that is so blatantly in the way (... in the same fashion that they had to remove the wet paper towels) before they start a pot of coffee.  I will persist.  I look forward to the day when I walk into the kitchen and find the plastic pitcher under the filter holder without my having done it.  I won't know who my new convert is... but it won't matter.  The cycle will have begun.  Soon others will begin to see this behavior and I'm convinced that it will catch on.

Soon, not placing the plastic pitcher on the counter under the filter holder will be taboo... like not wiping off the bathroom sink counter after you wash your hands.  How can people be so inconsiderate??  ;)


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